The Maid of Orleans

by queenB

Chains. Manacles. Shackles.

They hung from her tattered and bruised wrists and were her only adornment save the cross tucked close to her breast. They were the only bangles she had ever worn. As she ascended the planks that lead to the stake in the very heart of Rouen, it was the first time she had forgotten to notice the weight of them on her soul.

As her jailers piled bails of brambles at her feet, she heard a few disjointed voices around her cry, "Misericorde!"

Mercy.

But they were not her voices. They were not her saints. The only tongues that had ever really spoken to her heart were silent as the world spun around her.

She had first heard them in Domremy when she was but a child. They filled her heart with a purifying flame, penetrated her every fiber with purpose and beautiful dread. They sent her to find her dauphin, her King on earth... to better please the King of Heaven.

They were with her in Orleans when the ground was stained with blood and an arrow pierced her body. They filled her with life when her hands dripped with gory death along the Loire. They possessed her very spirit when Fastolfe cowered in fear at Patay and prayed that his English fathers would grant him mercy against this vehicle of death, this harbinger of doom... this seventeen year old girl.

She was their messenger, their vessel, their machine as she cut to the heart of the English Army... driving them to their knees and separating their noble heads from their trembling shoulders, casting their doomed spirits into a burning pyre of judgment. She was strong. She was blessed. She was the hand of God.

She struck with no mercy.

She felt a guard tug at her manacled hands and tie them tightly behind her as she stood numbly at the center of the Rouen market, the only vision in her sight the crucifix erected at the far side of the square.

They would speak to her. They would comfort her in her hour of need. She had faith. They had come to her again after the coronation at Reims. They had driven her to Paris with the few loyal troops left to her. France would be free under the power of the Almighty. And she was His instrument. She was His tool. This was her destiny. She knew nothing else.

In the cold rain that fell outside the walls of Paris, her newly crowned, earthly King left her to her fate as the shackles of Burgundy fell upon her and her voices faded to a whisper as she was chained to a dungeon wall. In their clipped and nasal anglicized French, they told her she had the look of a man about her... that her hands were worn and calloused like a butcher's. She thinks that she might have spat at her captors and called them cattle. Cattle on the way to the slaughter. But in truth she barely remembered her own voice.

She thinks she used to have a lovely voice before it grew hoarse from shouting orders over the din of battle. Perhaps she even sang songs of heavenly praise as a child. Perhaps she even helped her mother sing the youngest of the children to sleep. Perhaps the words fell from her lips like the nourishing spring rain.

But no rain fell from the gray sky of Rouen as the dry brush grew red and angry with fire. There were no songs as the fire spread to her garments and licked at her flesh. Even her screams were silent in her own ears as a wall of flame engulfed her and turned her body to ashes.

Misericorde. Mercy for the Maid of Orleans.

She had always thought of her life as a journey. A journey with clear beginnings and endings. Her birth from her mother's nourishing and blood-gorged womb pushed her from darkness into a world of light. So would be the moment of her death... pulled into a world of true light from the dingy gloom of mortality. As her soul slipped from the mortal coil, silent as the still walls of a cathedral she would again be reborn into the purity of Heaven. It was her destiny.

She opened her eyes and saw a robed figure before her, a heavy book in his hand. Falling to her knees, she covered her face as she pressed it against the cold ground. "Père," she cried.

He spoke to her with a voice she had heard a hundred times and beckoned her to stand. "I am not your father, child."

Rising unsteadily to her feet, she cast a timid glance at her host, his features shrouded in the shade of a thick cowl. His garments like those of a monk. Looking around her, she saw a well-manicured garden. A thousand different paths spread over the landscape. Glancing back to the ground, she saw she was standing at the end of one of them as the angel before her recited her name from his book.

"Jeanne d'Arc."

"I am Jeanne. And you are my angel. I have heard your voice all my life. You have lead me to righteousness. Are you St. Michael?"

He trailed a thin finger down the page of his book, his voice changing tone with each word he spoke. "St. Michael. St. Margaret. St. Catherine. You have given me many names."

Her soul grew cold as she studied him. "Who are you?"

Finally tearing his gaze away from his book, she looked into his vacant face. A face that seemed hewn from a block of cold marble. Chains rattled as his garments shifted around him. "I am Destiny."

"The Angel of Destiny?"

He turned his attention back to his book and she noticed his hands were bound to it by heavy shackles. "No. I am Destiny. The oldest of the Endless. Nothing more. Nothing less. This is my garden and you are here to meet your fate."

"So I am here to be judged?"

"You have already been judged by humanity."

Her eyes flashed with bitter tears. "So I am to be a heretic. A witch. A betrayer? Am I to be sent to Hell?!"

"No. A martyr. A saint. Even a hero to some. Humanity has made its judgment. You are the substance of legends. It is written."

He then turned a page in his great book.

Before any more words could rise to her lips, a pair of shackles formed out of thin air and clamped themselves to her wrists as heavy chains wrapped around her white robes, binding her tightly. Destiny addressed her with an almost pitying glance and said somberly. "You are to be of my brother's realm. They all wanted you, Maid of Orleans. Despair, Destruction, Delirium. Even Desire. But humanity wanted you more, Jeanne. You are to live forever in their dreams."

Her expression grew wild with confusion as the landscape opened behind her like a hungry maw and a thin, pale man emerged, his form twinkling with a million shining stars. In terror, she fell at Destiny's feet and pleaded, "Why?"

"It is your destiny."

Tears formed in her eyes as the tall, thin man lifted her with cold, strong hands. "Why did you speak to me? Why did you guide me?"

Looking down at her, he seemed to think for a long while before he finally spoke. "I only spoke what was already said. You only heard what you wanted to hear."

She fell limply into the arms of the Dream Lord, the actions of her entire life sprawling across her vision like a passion play. "Misericorde," she whispered as the cold, amorphous arms of the Dreaming embraced her and Destiny's garden faded from view.

But there was no mercy. This was her destiny and it could no longer be denied.

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